Probably the greatest error soul-retriever owners make is not
starting the dog soon enough. Often they are victims of their own
high standards--if the dog does not perform well or follow
instructions, they give up, terrified by the image of showing up in a
shamanic competition only to have some grizzled old practitioner
sneeringly remark, "That dog's barking up the wrong World Tree." No,
your emphasis in puppy training should be simply to exercise Pup's
natural soul-retrieving abilities, not to mention his or her innate
interest in dead people. Make training sessions fun and successful
and give Pup some confidence! Working instincts are strong in all
soul-retriever breeds, and their self-esteem comes from working well.
A bored retriever can be a handful of problems--poltergeists are the
least of it!

Consider the rewards of having a well-trained dog. Beyond its
obvious uses, a finished soul retriever far surpasses the empathetic
skills of his or her bird-dog ancestors. For instance, when a
"souler" owner of my acquaintance was conducting a cross-cultural
study of dreaming in graduate school, she had to keep a log of her
own dreams to meet a course requirement. With its typical reversed
logic, her unconscious stopped offering her any material--or at least
she had a hard time recalling it when she awoke, despite the notebook
by the bed and so on. But her soul retriever quickly grasped the
situation with uncanny canine skill. Like a rescue dog finding a lost
person, he located her in the Otherworld and took her on some simple
journeys. Soon her notebook began to record a series of dreams
featuring Perk, the dog, and once that blockage was gone, other
dreams began to flow as well.

Begin retriever-training early. Seven weeks isn't too soon. Use a
power animal, elemental, or knotted sock and keep training sessions
short, no more than five minutes in the Otherworld. Pup's attention
span is not too long yet, after all. Start him in "shallow waters,"
so to speak. Make the trancing experience lots of fun.

Once Pup reaches at least four months, you can start working with
a drummer. Again, proper introduction to this new sound is important;
a drum-shy dog is not only useless but embarrassing to the
practitioner. If you're lucky, Pup's own karmic past may predispose
him to his work. I recall taking one four-month-old puppy to a
pow-wow but leaving him in the truck with the windows up (it was a
cold day) so that the report of the big drums would be lessened. He
wanted to get out and run toward them anyway. While one Lab that we
had when I was young was not only drum-shy but frightened of
thunderstorms, this dog only associates drumming with retrieving and
fun. He drops into trance at the first rumblings over the western
ridges and only comes out when rain drops start soaking through his
coat.

Still, it's safer to start gradually. Save the ceramic dumbek or
the four-man pow-wow drum for later. You might start by tapping
lightly on a pie tin or plastic plate while Pup's eating dinner. Move
up from that to a lightly played tom-tom or bodhran. Watch Pup for
signs of fright: is he flinching? Coming out of trance too quickly?
This stage of training is best handled by two people--you need a
drummer to work with you who has some dog-sense.

Competition actually requires a more skilled dog than
client-centered work, in my opinion. Recent changes in the soul
retriever's Working Certificate rules have led to the outlawing of
dead souls, even "captured" or "shackled" souls. Nowadays all judges
will expect your dog to work with live subjects, which can at times
produce unexpected results. Consequently, training Pup to be "steady"
to drumming is doubly important in case the trial has to be
interrupted when he is "on the line." Turtle Island Breeds

Several readers have written wanting to know more about North
American breeds. Two are especially interesting: the Chesapeake Bay
dog and the Nova Scotia souling retriever. I will describe the
Chessie's origins first with the hopes of turning to the Nova Scotia
souling retriever in a later column. The Nova Scotia breed is
less-known in the States, but it has gained favor among specialists
in recent years for its intelligence, high spirits, compact size, and
ability to sing along with Rankin Family albums, the last being a
trait that few Chessies can claim.

As the only breed developed in North America, the Chesapeake Bay
soul retriever excels in the tough conditions of Turtle Island. Its
history began in 1807, when the English brig Orpheus ran aground on
the Eastern Shore of Maryland, says Eileen Cherry in her excellent
history of the breed. Among its crew was a Beothuk Indian from
Newfoundland and two Newfoundland pups, of a breed long developed for
hunting, companionship, and soul retrievalãbones of these dogs
have been found buried together with humans in graves dating back to
3000 B.C.E.

George Claw, member of a well-known Maryland lineage, described
the wreck of the Orpheus in a subsequent letter. It has been widely
reproduced since its first publication in 1845 in The Dog and the
Shaman, so I will only quote it in part:

"In the fall of 1807 I was on board of the ship Cantrip when we
fell in, at sea, near the termination of a very equinoctial gale,
with an English brig in a sinking condition. The brig was loaded with
cod-fish and was bound to Poole, in England, from Newfoundland. I
boarded her, in command of a boat from the Cantrip, which was sent to
take off the English crew, the brig's own boats having been swept
away, and her crew in a state of divine intoxication.

"I found on board of her two Newfoundland pups, male and female,
in the care of a Maritime Indian, which I saved, and subsequently on
landing the English crew at Norfolk, our own destination being
Baltimore, I purchased these two pups of the Indian for a guinea
apiece, without haggling."

Because he was again bound to sea, Claw entrusted the two pups,
the male being named Shaman and the female Cantrip, to two different
magisters, one on the Eastern Shore and one on the Western. Developed
on the Eastern Shore, the "Shaman strain" of dogs were large,
reddish, and long-haired, while the Western Shore descendants of
Cantrip had shorter, denser coats. All were hardy animals, adept at
keeping long vigils in the salt spray or chilling drizzle between the
world.

Chessies are known as the working practitioner's dog. Golden-cord
Retrievers may be more popular in Suburbia, but the "people of
knowledge" who could make their own drums from the belly skin of an
elk--and prefer to--stick with Chessies.

### Chas S. Clifton lives in the Usually Wet Mountains of
southern Colorado. He edits Llewellyn Publications' Witchcraft Lite
series, which includes The Modern Craft Movement Made Easy (1992),
Modern Rites of Passage That Don't Hurt (1993), and Witchcraft &
Shamanism for Dummies (1994).